Computational Complexity and other fun stuff in math and computer science from Lance Fortnow and Bill Gasarch

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Campus Maps

As an academic I can't count how many different college campuses I
have visited. Most US universities produce beautiful glossy maps to
make it easy to navigate to and around the university but you can't
get one of these maps unless someone mails you a copy. So I go to the
university's website and can usually find a page of maps.

The University of Wisconsin map page has a beautiful
flash version of their campus map. Someone put considerable time to
design such a completely useless map. What am I supposed to do, walk
around campus with my laptop open to figure my way around? Wisconsin
also has a PDF version of their map but when printed the type is so
small the map is also useless. Admittedly Chicago does not do maps much better.

The glossy maps are typically much larger than the usual printer
page, but still universities can do better than just creating PDFs
of shrunken versions of their usual map. Princeton, has their useless
interactive map, but their printed map does a nicer job with a second
page having a building directory very useful with a duplex printer.

Some day we will carry portable GPS devices which when we visit a
campus will download building
information and guide us to where we want to go. Until that day
universities should take the effort they use to create fancy
interactive maps and instead focus on producing a "print and
go" map designed specifically for standard letter-size paper.

When visiting a university, it's annoying that I need two separate maps to navigate: Google Maps to find the university, and the Campus Map to find the right building.

There's an interesting project at MSR that gives a solution: they can overlay any map on top of Microsoft's Virtual Earth (a Google Maps competitor). In fact, you can download their tool and overlay any map by yourself.

why do you need hitech devices like GPSes, online maps when on campus. it would help if colleges put "physical" maps at a few conveneint locations which can be consulted. being colleges there would also be enough humans around who can guide you.